Mamiwata is an African name for a spirit believed to be embodied by the manatee. This blog chronicles my search for the elusive African manatee, and my exploration to understand its biology, habitat and preservation needs, economic and cultural significance. So little is known about this animal, yet it is intensely hunted almost everywhere it exists and may already be gone from much of its previous range. In 2006 I was inspired to go find and study them, starting in Gabon.

Friday, April 03, 2015

Detecting African Manatee Populations

A new genetics
study just completed as part of my dissertation research has defined African
manatee populations across their large range (21 countries) for the first time.
Over eight years I collected 78 manatee tissue samples from eight countries and
successfully isolated DNA from 63 of them in order to determine where distinct
populations of the species occur. Collecting the samples was actually the
hardest part of the study, because manatees in Africa live in very remote
places, and even when samples were collected (from carcasses, live manatees
rescued or captured for studies, and from manatee bushmeat in markets) it
sometimes took over a year to get the proper export permits to send them to my
lab in the USA for analysis. Most of the samples came from Senegal and Gabon,
because those are the studies where I have long-term study sites. Other samples
were collected during trips to other countries or provided by collaborators working in those countries. I studied two mitochondrial
genes which are commonly used for population genetics because they can inform
us about deeper evolutionary levels, and populations rather than individuals. I
identified different haplotypes, which are a unique combination of forms of a
gene found on same chromosome. That sounds complicated, but think of haplotypes
being ice cream, and the different combinations are like different flavors. For
example, mocha chip and mint chocolate chip are more similar to each other than
to strawberry ice cream because they both have chocolate chips. In the same
way, some haplotypes are mostly closely related to each other and are from the
same population, whereas others are more distantly related and are from
different populations.

My research
identified 25 new haplotypes for the African manatee, which is exciting since
only five had been identified prior to this study. The study identified four
populations: one in West Africa (coastal Senegal, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau), a
separate population in the Senegal River, an inland Niger River population that
included samples from Mali, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and a large population in
West and Central Africa (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Cameroon, and Gabon). This
study is a first step and once it is published, we will continue collecting and
analyzing samples in order to continuing defining more fine-scale population
structure.

Here's a map of DNA (control
region) haplotypes identified in 63 African manatee samples. Sixteen new (solid
colors) and five previously published haplotypes (patterns; Vianna et al. 2006) are shown in pie charts.
Circle size corresponds to the total number of samples per country, and slices
are proportional to haplotypes found (see inset table). Asterisks (*) indicate
previously published haplotypes identified by this study at four new locations.

By
defining manatee populations across Africa, this work aids conservation efforts
for the species by informing wildlife managers in many countries about where
unique populations exist, where they can focus trans-boundary conservation and
management efforts (when populations occur across borders), and where efforts
need to be targeted to specific locations where manatee populations are
isolated. My co-authors and I are very excited to publish this work in the
scientific literature soon!